Looking Beyond Numbers in the Arms Talks

By BERNARD E. TRAINOR, Special to the New York Times

Published: February 5, 1989

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4—
When the Warsaw Pact revealed its inventory of troops and weapons this week in advance of the conventional arms reduction talks, it rejected assertions that the Soviet-led alliance vastly outnumbered the North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces.

The Pact communique conceded that its alliance had more tanks and artillery than NATO, but reaffirmed its longstanding position that this superiority was offset by Western anti-tank weapons, attack aircraft and naval power.

NATO released its figures last November, maintaining that the Warsaw Pact had a clear advantage over the Western alliance in almost all categories of conventional weapons and forces.

Both sides can legitimately defend the accuracy of their figures because of the different counting rules used by each side. For example, NATO does not count stored tanks, while the Warsaw Pact does.

The independent International Institute for Strategic Studies, the most authoritative civilian source on the military balance, says active and reserve manpower is be about equal on both sides, but gives a substantial edge in most weapons categories to the Warsaw Pact. However, the London-based institute judges this advantage insufficient to insure Soviet victory in a Warsaw Pact-NATO war.

It is not likely that the two sides will agree on numbers as they prepare for talks scheduled to begin in Vienna on March 9. And in any case, the numbers do not take into account variable factors like the capability of the weapons and the soldiers who employ them.

Additional variables are the quality of the opposing command, control and intelligence systems, an army's logistics capabilities and, in the age of modern warfare, exotic electronic warfare devices. All Factors Are Considered

Military experts agree that the size of opposing forces does not determine the outcome of battles. Arms control negotiators recognize this and it is unlikely they will let disagreement on numbers derail the talks as they have done in the past.

Both sides now concern themselves less with comparing numbers and more with insuring that the overall balance of military power takes all factors into acount and provides security for each party by removing the threat of a surprise attack by the other.

The Warsaw Pact says it fears a surprise attack initiated by the powerful NATO air forces, while Western Europe has long expressed its fear of an armored thrust against it by the masses of armored forces deployed close to the West German border. Reducing these fears will be the first order of business in the March talks.

In the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks stalled in Vienna since 1973, negotiators learned the futility of arms negotiations based solely upon numbers of weapons and soldiers. The talks, geographically limited to Central Europe, were fruitless because agreement could not be reached on verifiable data on the size of armed forces on either side.

The coming talks will be broader in both scope and geography, focusing on overall military capabilities rather than aggregate numbers of weapons and troops.